Love me Tinder

When you end a relationship you are subject to lots of advice and sooner or later that advice seems to be 'go and get laid'. This is something that's easy to say from the comfort of a long term relationship where the prospect of casual dating may seem fun and even glamourous but the prospect of actually doing off the back of your life being wrenched apart is totally different. 

However, after a few months of separation I was coerced in to joining Tinder and my god it's a bloody cesspool. I have not used any kind of online dating in the past so I had no idea what to expect but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to encounter. 

First of all are the guys who just put it straight out there by posting profile pics of their boners, or are just naked- clearly looking for deep and meaningful relationships there. Then there are the straight up misogynists who proudly state in their profiles they are only interested in women who 'take care of themselves' whilst making no statements about personality whatsoever. You also have the piss heads whose profile photos are a blurry mix of nights out with friends and you have no idea which one the guy is - ok that might make the first date kind of interesting, if he sobers up for long enough to actually make it. 

Men are also have no idea what they want.
'I'm not interested in girls who are materialistic' - has a picture of him next to a sports car which is clearly not his by the way he awkwardly posing next to it but not actually touching it. 
'I don't want anyone shallow and into their looks' - has pictures of himself topless in the gym mirror. 

So you trawl through a slew of pictures whilst seriously considering celibacy or becoming a lesbian when you decide you might as well swipe right. Oh you got a match - yeah don't be fooled- as it turns out you're not the only girl who's picky and guys have cottoned on to this fact and play the odds. They swipe right on mass and hope that one of those will swipe them and then decide if they like them or not. I had quite a few matches but didn't actually communicate with many of them and after one guy wanted to send me pics of his torso (yes I think that was euphemism) I pretty much stopped using it. 

I had actually started chatting to one guy and we did go on a date, which was terrifying, but it was ok and although I didn't see him again it was good to have gotten that one date under my belt. 

It wasn't until a few weeks later that the app got opened again whilst on a drunken night out with my friends. Much wine was had and apparently lots of swiping was done and I think don't most of the swiping was me - honestly married people have much lower standards than actual singles. So when I actually got up the next day with the mother of all hangovers and checked my phone I had a slew of Tinder activity and worryingly from guys as young as 25! Someone had been messing with my settings. I went in and sent a few apology messages to people saying that I couldn't in good conscience date someone who was born whilst I was in year nine at high school (shudder). However, the swiping did result in me connecting with someone from my past. It was totally freaky but we really clicked and I spent the rest of the day messaging them from my hangover pit. 

We met, we started dating, it was nice. We existed in a bubble and that was safe. 

The problem started when other people started to factor in to the relationship. Until that point I had been somewhat conscience of my motives for dating but I tried not to think about it too deeply. However, once that safe bubble that was just the two of us burst I couldn't help but get caught up in my head and all the doubts started to creep in. Why was I dating? Was I trying to prove something to my ex? Was I just delaying some deep seated emotions from the spilt? Were my feelings real or just transference?  Let me tell you when you suffer from anxiety this kind of stuff will make you ill - I mean physically sick. 

I knew it was me and my problems and it wasn't him. He was great, if I could Weird Science myself a guy he would pretty much be it, but I just wasn't in the right place. We mutually decided to call it a day as we are both dealing with the aftermath of separation and there is no timetable for recovery. It would be so much easier to bury the doubts and carry on but that's not fair on anyone and I would just be doing what I'm accusing my ex of, running away from my problems. My problems don't stem from any residual feelings for my ex but from my own beaten down sense of self that you get from years of being in a shitty relationship. I need to be absolutely sure of my feelings about me before I go looking for someone else again. 

So I'm giving myself time to just be me and find out who that is. Who knows where I'll be in 3,6,12 months time but I'm not going to rush it and risk losing someone great again. 

The Worst Part

As hard as the last few weeks have been I knew it would be nothing compared to the pain of having to tell my son that me and his Dad were getting divorced. I've only really lost it twice with my soon to be ex during this whole process and the first was when we were talking about how we were going to break it to our son. 

His bright idea was to say that the reason he was leaving was because he doesn't love Mummy anymore. I just looked at him with incredulity and walked out of the door and grabbed my laptop and pulled up every article that said you never tell you child that you have fallen out of love with your spouse because your child may worry that you will fall out of love with them. I already knew this because I'm a human being with emotions and the ability to empathise. However, as usual he didn't think what I said could possible have any merit so I had to show him what some stranger had said on the internet as my opinion has no validity whatsoever. I just rolled my eyes so hard I saw my brain. 

We decided to tell him two weeks before my husband was due to leave so he had time to talk to both of us about his feelings before he left. We settled on Saturday morning (after he'd been to the gym obvs, cant let a little thing like your child's welfare come between you and body attack). 

Now, all the sites tell you to show a united front in front of your child and that would be fine if your emotions weren't a dangling raw mess. I told my husband he had to lead the conversation and I would be there to support our boy. 

We sat him down and he told him that we were splitting up. He burst into tears, I've never seen him cry like that before. My mum instincts took over and I grabbed him up and pulled him into me and just let him cry whilst holding as close as I could. I could feel my heart breaking in my chest. I look over my shoulder and silently mouthed to my husband 'I hate you so much right now'. 

Then came the second blow when he asked about the Christmas holiday and we had to tell him we weren't going and the tears flowed once again. I was broken, I didn't know what to do or what to say to make hime feel better but I needn't worry because my husband flew to the rescue by offering to by him a Nintendo Switch. I could have punched him, but that's his solution to everything throw money at it. 

As any 6 year old would he instantly brightened up at this promise and they trotted off to go and buy his 'guilt be gone' gift. 

I can tell you now kids, this is not the way to handle this. All it did was stop the real conversation that needed to happen. My husband managed to get out everything he wanted to say, like - I'm leaving and you need to get a new house too. But he had no time to give our son the time and space to process and talk about the bomb we had just dropped on him. 

I felt like the whole thing was more for my benefit, to yet again give me the message that he was leaving me and that was that. (Apparently he was being so horrible to me so that I didn't get the wrong idea; I told him in no uncertain terms that I wouldn't have him back. Ever). 

In the days that followed my mental health to a huge nose dive; I was a weeping mess on the kitchen floor. I felt like I had let my boy down. All I ever wanted was to be a proper family for him but I had failed. I was facing two more weeks of living under the same roof as my husband, and it was like torture. Everytime I saw him I just felt so angry, I desperately wanted to lash out and hurt him but I knew that he didn't care. I hated the person I was around him, I felt so bitter that he was moving on and leaving me to deal with a child that was struggling to process what was happening. My husband was hardly around for the next two weeks whch made me even madder as he only had a short amount to time to spend with his son but his new girlfriend was apparently a more exciting prospect. 

I felt suffocated by everything I wanted to run away and even considered going on holiday to get away from it all but I knew that wouldn't be fair on my son as I had no childcare in place. But the urge to run wasn't going away and then my Dad offered for me and my son to go and stay with him the weekend that my husband moved out. I jumped at the chance. I knew it would be good for me to get away and good for my boy not to see his Dad move out of his home. 

It was the best decision. I finally felt like I had the space I had been craving. I ate, I drank, I talked and I slept. I was ready for whatever came next. 

The beginning of the end

Five days before my 39th birthday my husband told me he wanted to seperate. I remember the room spinning a bit and I felt like I'd been lit on fire. I thought I was going to be sick and I just wanted to run away.

I'm not going to pretend that this was a bolt out of the blue, things had not been right for a long time. We had been spending more and more time apart, I'm a home bird but he was staying out until the early hours and coming home drunk more and more frequently.  I put it down to a mid-life crisis as he has a big birthday coming and I wanted to give him the space to work through it but I couldn't help sense there was some more going on. 

I had confronted him a number of times about it but he just brushed it off even when his behaviour was becoming quite extreme. He was living life like an 18 year old, ignoring his family responsibilities, leaving the house in a state as his drifted in and out and spending most weekends out and leaving me at home with our child. 

I now know he was trying to push me into leaving him as he was too cowardly (his words) to talk to me about it. If he treated me badly enough I'd walk away and he could move on with his hands clean, does this sound familiar at all? 

I knew deep down this was the case and my anxiety had been getting worse over the last few months as I was waiting for hammer to drop. I tried to ignore it but it was just getting worse. I was isolating myself from friends, family and work so I didn't have to face fact that my marriage was heading down the crapper. But I can tell you now ignorance is not bliss. 

It finally happened when I cornered him about our problems and he dropped the news that he didn't want to be with me anymore. He admitted he'd felt like this for a long time but was to weak to admit it. I asked him if there was someone else but he said there wasn't and it was just about him. He wanted to live his life for him, without the responsibilities of a grown-up (well wouldn't we all but we have to live in the real world). He had been living a selfish life for months, leaving me to do the lions share of the housework and childcare, and this was the life he has now chosen for himself. 

I asked him to go and see a counseller with me and he agreed. I thought it best that we try and deal with whatever happens next in the most healthy way possible and that would probably best be achieved with some impartial help. We have a family holiday booked to go to Lapland at Christmas and I didn't want to add to my son's inevitable heartbreak by telling him that as well as his parents splitting up he would also not get the holiday he'd had been looking forward to for a year. We both agreed that what ever happened he had to be at the heart of any decisions we made and that he would always come first. 

I left the room in a state of shock, I hadn't really processed what had happened. I didn't sleep much and got up in the middle of the night as I didn't want to spend the night staring at the ceiling. I watch TV until it was time to get the family up and I got my son ready for school. I opened up my laptop ready for work and I just broke down. I called my boss and explained what happened and she was very understanding and told me to take a few days. I called my Mum and she came over and comforted me. I felt totally lost, I didn't know what to think or feel or say. I think I sat in silence for most of time my Mum was here, now I know I was in shock. I'd had the rug pulled out from under my life and everyting was about to change but at that time I didn't know that was worst was yet to come.